


gyokuro

by butterflyswimmer



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Introspection, Post-Canon, Romance, Slice of Life, Winter, keiichi pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 15:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18391052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyswimmer/pseuds/butterflyswimmer
Summary: Mion is his best friend, and he views her as decidedly un-female, as a matter of principle. Obviously.In which Keiichi is absolutely terrible at viewing Mion as un-female.





	gyokuro

“Hey Mion, my hands are full, could you let me in?” He stands outside his room, equipped with a tray containing tea and snacks, but is greeted with nothing but silence. When another two appeals generate zero response, he heaves a sigh, placing the tray on the floor to slide open the door himself. By this point, he’s considering the possibility of some Satoko-esque trap having been planted in his time brewing the tea—yes, he _had_ learnt from his prior mistakes, thank you very much. He inches his way into the room gingerly, eyes on the floor around his feet, the doorframe, the handle… And there’s nothing. It’s only when he recovers the tray from the floor with relief and stands back up that he realises the reason for his trouble, asleep at his kotatsu.  
  


Mion’s university entrance exams were fast approaching, which appeared to be giving him a great deal more anxiety than her. One night he had snapped whilst they were on the phone and written up a revision plan. He had handed it to her at school the next day, with the threat of enforcing it if she didn’t do so herself. She had smirked and teased him with a sexually-charged comment or two and for once he had only crossed his arms and implored her to think about her future. It was worth his while—for all her huffing and sighing, she begrudgingly agreed.

Mion evidently had hoped he would forget about this arrangement, and that was exactly how they’d landed themselves here: with him carting textbooks back and forth to her house day after day over the winter break, where they would spend hours hunched over tables as the world outside turned white, only straightening up to give their aching bones some relief when the room was awash with soft orange sunset. His presence was as necessary for teaching as it was for motivation: Mion was still learning most of the material for the first time.

Somewhere in all this Mion had evidently built up some debt of gratitude, or pity, or whatever else—which was what had led her to go to the trouble of making the journey to his house that particular day, lest she save him some of the energy he was expending through all this. She herself had remained remarkably carefree about the passage of time and its incessant march onwards—but that was their club president for them, and hadn’t they been through worse than university entrance exams? Eventually he developed the feeling that it would all work itself out, one way or another.

These were precisely the thoughts running through his head as he boiled the water for the tea downstairs, squinting at the weather worsening beyond the window. It was a particularly icy day—he had given Mion one of his sweaters after she’d arrived, to his horror, without so much as a coat on. Before he knew it, a smile was playing on his lips. She was ridiculous. Endlessly and utterly ridiculous, like nobody he had ever met.

  
At some point during the winter, he had dragged the small, portable kotatsu out of the cupboard, bought especially for his room to be unearthed once the vicious Hinamizawan winters he’d only heard stories of during the summer rolled around. A luxurious consolation of sorts from his parents to make up for the move he’d once so dreaded. It was unimaginable to think he’d once been so pessimistic about his future here. But then, he wasn’t really the person he’d been before coming here at all any more.

The kotatsu had finally seen some use when she’d arrived earlier that day, hands alarmingly white as she’d thrown one up in greeting from the doorstep. He’d rushed her inside with a flurry of admonishments and complaints as she’d laughed her way down the hall to greet his parents. Just unbelievable.

  
Unbelievable. That’s the word that comes to mind now, as he slides the door shut with precision, careful not to make a noise, before making his way back and kneeling down to the mess of pens and paper spilling over the edges of the small table. It’s cramped, and he’s careful not to nudge her knee as he settles back in. He mutters an ‘enjoy the tea’ as he pours his cup.

  
It’s only after some time listening to the nothing-sounds of the boiler and the occasional tap of a bare tree branch against his window, cradling his still-too-hot cup, that he finally permits himself to look back at her. Through the silence, he can just make out the sound of her slow breathing.

She’s slumped over the table, facing towards him, head resting on folded arms. The end of a pencil just pokes her in the cheek, still grasped firmly in her right hand. It’s not like she’d meant to fall asleep, or she simply would’ve laid down.

  
He can imagine it—as he’d been bustling about the kitchen for some ten minutes, she had been staring at the maths book open on the table, working away at the problems so he could check them when he came back. After some minutes had passed, she’d probably done the same as him—looked to the window, the gentle scenery beyond. Lulled by the warmth of the kotatsu, mind dulled with the repetitive activity, she had stretched, yawned, and collapsed into her current position, promising herself only to rest her eyes until he returned. He was sure that was how it would’ve gone. There was no way he’d have let her live it down if he’d found her drooling all over her notes, after all.

He wondered how deep a sleep she had to be in that she hadn’t heard him at the door. More than that, he thought it surprising compared to the way she’d flushed earlier in the day when he’d led her up to his room for the very first time. Obviously he hadn’t considered the implications, which had left them two stuttering messes for a good few minutes as he clarified. It was warmer. More comfortable. His parents would get in the way otherwise.

Well, said parents had helped matters very little in their evident delight at what was his very first time inviting a girl over—he had _told_ them too many times to count that it wasn’t _like_ that—and had long since left to visit a friend’s. Of course, his parents didn’t know Mion so well—she didn’t come to diligently pick him up every morning like Rena—and he wondered whether they’d be quite so pleased if they did. After all, she was… well, Mion.

He nods to himself as if to affirm it. She was Mion. Whatever that meant, and however that explained his focusing his eyes on the scrap of notebook paper in front of him until the numbers went all blurry. His concentrated effort to look anywhere but at the girl sleeping beside him soon failed.  


The borrowed sweater was a little too big, one his mother had knitted for him rather haphazardly some years ago as more of an experiment than to serve any particular purpose, and her hands barely peek out from the sleeves. It’s the little things like this—the things he so rarely has the chance to notice—that make him realise how slender she is, how delicate each of her fingers are, nails neat and trim. These things trouble him, because they’re like noise in the data: Mion is their club president, brash and loud, dirty-mouthed and lacking in any and all etiquette, strong enough to hold her own in a fight better than he ever could. Mion is his best friend, and he views her as decidedly un-female, as a matter of principle. Obviously.

Well, Mion is female—he’s not stupid, and he’s not blind—but it was something surprisingly easy to ignore in the day to day of their lives together. Sure, there were the rare lost club games that left her in some awfully fetishistic outfit or another, and then there were the times he’d visit Angel Mort whilst she was working, and their uniforms were really no better. Mion was attractive, to put it modestly. He supposed the explicit back-and-forth they so often engaged in was something of a defense mechanism, considering how inexperienced they both were with navigating these things. It was all in good fun, though—it didn’t amount to anything. He was a teenage boy—some level of strange sexual tension was part and parcel of these relationships. He figured that much would be better out in the open, acknowledged and tossed aside. Treating it as a secret would only make it take on meaning.

So yes, objectively, Mion is attractive, and is definitely female. This is still a fact he tries to ignore in any given situation where she is remotely decently dressed, as she thankfully was the majority of the time. All things considered, he is surprised he’s so affected by the chip of pink polish on her baby fingernail, probably something she’d tried and just as quickly discarded for the very same reasons he’s presenting in his mind at present—that femininity in its truest form was not something people saw in her, or something she saw in herself, regardless of her wishes. And that makes him feel a little bad.

He lets his gaze drift, lethargic, from her hands and up over her form—little more than an indistinct pile of wool—to her face. Her bangs spill into closed eyes, unruly from the winter winds. Another thing—he’s not usually close enough to notice how long her eyelashes are.

The colour has returned to her cheeks since she’s arrived, and he’s glad for it. She looks so comfortable, so at peace that it brings him an indescribable warmth. There’s something incredibly intimate in seeing her like this, even more so for the hurricane of a person she usually was, and especially to know she felt this secure in his own home, in his room, in his company.

All of this is to assume Mion isn’t going to send a heavy textbook flying at his face if she awakes suddenly to find out he’s been staring at her for minutes straight. And is that really what he’s been doing? When his eyes drift to the clock above her head, on the far wall, he realises it’s not. It has in fact been the better part of half an hour.

There’s a strange shift in his chest, like when you hear the telltale sound of a door open when you’re up to mischief as a child and know you’ve been caught, if not a little more complicated. Or a lot more complicated. In his flustered state, he seeks out something else to focus on besides the way her bangs fall into her eyes, the just-pink of her cheeks—and so, of course, he redirects his attention to her lips.

He begins to wonder now—things he hasn’t before—about the girl dozing inches away from him. He wonders whether she uses one of those scented lip balms Rena loves and has whole collections of, accosting him with delight when she buys a new set to make him smell each and every one, always adorably excited. The kind of thing Mion would surely never let herself be seen doing, but just as well might, in the confines of her own room. He could imagine her applying it before bed, discreet, the subtlest touch of girlishness and all she would allow, before she undid the ribbon in her hair and brushed it out.

This is both the only explanation for and an easy distraction from the simple fact that her lips look impossibly soft. He wets his own with his tongue, suddenly self-conscious, decidedly chapped and surely not nearly as attractive. Not that he’s calling his best friend’s lips attractive, because it’s both a strange word for lips and especially for his best friend’s lips and honestly what he’d meant was that they looked like they’d be nice to kiss. If they didn’t belong to his best friend.

Keiichi begins to wonder what’s in this tea he’d found at the back of the kitchen cupboard, as if that might be an excuse. He runs his hand through his hair a few times, straightening his back in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to regain composure. This is because he forgets just how close they are, what with all the ways to describe lips flying around in his head. His knee knocks into her own, and for a moment he thinks his heart has just about stopped functioning.

The result is rather anticlimactic for the shock he feels, as though he’s exposed himself in the act of something far more scandalous—he thinks of the way she had looked at him that morning when he’d offhandedly mentioned going to his room, and that really isn’t what he needs right now— Mion shifts slightly, the smallest of sounds escaping her, but her eyes remain closed. He learns how to breathe again.  


Her leg just rests against his now, warm and reassuring—there’s something in her mere physical presence that is, and always has been, for him. It’s only now that he thinks about how much nicer it would be to close the distance—to feel the certainty of her form. Even just that incredibly delicate hand of hers in his own.

There’s no reason for him to think these things, and it’s not like he’s ever had a friendship to compare this one to, to see if it’s normal. He only thinks it would be something more than the joy that explodes in his chest when he hears her laugh, the surest sound of happiness he knows, his anchor. To hold her, to feel her warmth—

Mion’s eyes flutter open, almost a trick of the light. It’s dark out now and the corners of the room are lost to shadows, beyond the reach of his single lamp. He’s not sure if he’s actually imagined it until she sits up and stretches with something between a groan and a yawn. Backs of hands go to still-sleepy eyes. She blinks once, twice. Finally, she notices him—and tries to straighten up again, very suddenly and seemingly without having processed that she already has, which results in her slamming her knee into the underside of the table and hissing in pain. “K-Kei-chan…? Sorry, did I fall asleep?”

“Yep.”

He’s had a considerable amount more time to wrap his head around his fact than her, and it takes another few moments for her to gather herself. “W-Well, that’s embarrassing. You didn’t draw on my face, did you?” She squints suspiciously at him, fingers going to her cheeks.

“I promise I didn’t.”

“Really…?”

“Really.”

“That seems too good to be true.” She frowns at him.

“Well, _sorry_. I’ll be sure to do it next time, to live up to your opinion of me. We’re not all as underhanded as you, Mion.”

“Then you didn’t do _anything_ weird?”

“Like what?” The words rush out of his mouth, tripping over themselves, because his brain is more occupied with the answer to her question he can’t say, which is _like thinking about how nice or alternatively soft or alternatively kissable your lips looked Keiichi shut up._ “I did not do anything weird.” He reaffirms, a bit too quickly to sound convincing.

She gets up to go to the bathroom and look in the mirror, eyeing him somewhat contemptuously all the while and rubbing her knee. When she’s gone from the room, he exhales heavily. Maybe this was his just desserts for being oppressively invested in his _best friend_ ’s education.

  
A little while later she returns, seemingly placated and mumbling a ‘thanks’ he doesn’t feel like he really deserves. “Why didn’t you just wake me up, though?”

He presses his lips firmly shut to allow himself to think up a proper answer to this question that won’t cast him back under suspicion, but it comes to him more easily than he expects. “You looked so peaceful.”

She stops gathering her study materials, now—it’s far too late to carry on—and her fingers find her sleeve, fiddling with the thick knit of his sweater. She dips her head, facing away from him. “Well, I kind of stayed up most of last night trying to work out today’s problems.” And then, more quietly, “I feel bad about how much you’ve been helping me.”

This surprises him. “You didn’t have to come today if you were tired. I wouldn’t really get mad.” He feels a little bad for his nagging, now. “Besides, if you’ve already been over it all…”

“I still didn’t get it. And I like studying with you.” She stands up very quickly, pulling on her backpack and making for the door without looking at him. She only falters when she’s made it out to the hall. “Oh, your sweater…”

“Oh, that’s okay, you’ll need it going home now, it’s snowing again… In fact, let me walk you.”

She pulls it over her head—there she goes, messing up her bangs again—and shakes her head resolutely, even as he protests all the way to the front door. All at once she becomes herself again; club president, making all the rules, bossing them around, objections be damned. She thrusts the sweater back into his hands and he asks her won’t she _please_ take it, for the sake of Irie-sensei and her prospective case of hypothermia. She hesitates and looks down.

“I won’t get any more studying done tonight if I take this.”

He asks her what she means as she pulls on her shoes and stands. When she opens the door, an icy wind blows in, and as if anticipating his words, she reminds him she lives but a short walk away. Then there’s sharp intake of breath, as if she’s preparing herself for something. “A-Anyway, it’s your fault I fell asleep. Your sweater had this, like… relaxing smell. That reminded me of you, I guess.” She loses conviction with every word, and under the porch light her face is as red as it had been when she’d arrived, but without the pretense of weather. She sounds faux-sulky, as though trying to convince them both she’s genuinely angry. “It was nice.” This is the last things she mumbles before she disappears out into the night, leaving him dumbfounded on his doorstep.

  
Later his parents will tease him for details over dinner and he’ll bat the questions away with an affected apathy that’s enough to kill their interest relatively quickly. After that, when they’re clearing away the dishes, he’ll finally bring the tray-responsible-for-more-trouble-than-it’s-worth down from his room, complete with a pot and two cups full of untouched, stone cold tea. His mother throws something of a fit when she sees—turns out it had been an expensive brand she could only get on her trips to Tokyo, and all gone to waste too. Now, she _supposed_ she wouldn’t have minded if they’d actually drank it, and Mion-chan _was_ a guest, but he really should’ve known better, and she’d put it at the back of that cupboard for this very reason, and she would be taking it out of his allowance, and so on. The barrage has nearly worn off when his mother catches the ‘smirk’ on his face and off she goes again, this time about attitude. His dad passes by with an apologetic look thrown over her shoulder.

What she doesn’t know is that he’s not smirking at her lecture so much as at how much trouble one pot of brewed tea could cause, and the fact he would welcome it all again for a few more minutes of undisturbed observation, the best he can hope for or figure his wants and emotions into for now, surely all either of them are ready for. After all, after enough time musing over her sleeping face, he’d found the right descriptor—nothing so trite as what he’d managed to come up with before, and the undeniable truth. It was clear to him now, in a way he’d spent far too long trying to avoid, and for what reason? She was beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know what happened to cause this terrible year-long drought in keimii content from me, it really does not feel like it's been that long. but naturally, after many genuine attempts to plan out and write fic for them and thinking i'd finally wrung myself dry, i was possessed by the urge to write this whole thing on a complete whim last night. i really missed writing from keiichi's perspective, and most especially about how hopelessly in love with mion he is and how bad he is at realising this.
> 
> p.s. don't ask me for a timeline of mion's movement through the education system, i've given up trying to make it accurate.


End file.
